pieces fell.
“Something’s happening,” Buchan said.
“You don’t say,” Kara said. “The Engine,” she said, and her smile was wide, and grim. “It has to be.”
“And you?”
“I'm still going up. Four iron ships, I reckon there’s a path into the city.”
The Collard Green had already been dragged into the darkness, but the Roslyn Dawn had refused to go into the dark, and Kara couldn’t blame her. There was something ominous about that space beneath the wall despite its warmth. For all David’s declarations that it was safe, it threatened her. Kara was of the sky, as much as her Aerokin. Wide open spaces welcomed her, but that dark, it was old; it seemed to know something and seemed ready to swallow her without hesitation — perhaps the stories that David had told about the Downing Bridge and its malevolent spiders had affected her more than she’d thought.
She folded her arms and walked back to the Dawn.
Buchan shouted after her. “Do you have a death wish, girl?”
Kara Jade smiled. “I think you have me confused with Margaret. The Dawn will keep me safe.”
The Dawn ’s doorifice was already opening. Kara could see Buchan’s large form in the dark beneath the overhang, and could just make out Whig’s slender figure behind him; touching his shoulder, talking to him quietly, no doubt, but with a strength that all Whig’s conversations possessed.
She stroked the belly of her Aerokin. “Just you and me,” she said.
The Dawn sighed, released her grip upon the earth and began to fly, rising high and fast. Outside it was cold and dead, but here, wrapped in such perfect life, Kara felt warm, she felt like she was home.
All alone in her Dawn. Finally alone — and never alone.
She couldn't help smiling. Death wish, no! This was all about life!
CHAPTER 49
There was desperation in those last moments. When things tipped over, and everything became mad, both sides did things that were… regrettable. Such is it at the ending of every war. How can forgiveness even be considered? Because it must be. Genocide is the only other option.
TEARWIN MEET 2100 MILES NORTH OF THE ROIL
They were upon Margaret almost at once.
Her vision narrowed, grew focussed only on the moment: a weakness in the enemy, a break in defence, the turning of teeth or claw. Margaret was back in Tate — in that amphitheatre where she had been wounded, but never beaten.
She struck the first Quarg Hound in the neck, once, twice, and it fell dead. its blood mingled with the snow: a bloody ash.
The second Hound lashed out — and she was ready for it, ducking beneath its great claws, driving the chilled blade into its belly, pulling away as it fell on the sword; already swinging the other blade up and down, and onto its neck. The blade caught on armour, but she found her balance at once, struck down again, and watched the Quarg Hound’s head drop to the ground.
She kicked it away, and heard footsteps behind her. She had spun around in her fighting, no longer had her back to the wall. She remedied that problem, turning on her heel and throwing a blade from her belt towards the sound.
A man there ducked. And the blade clattered off a wall.
“You,” Tope said. “Where’s the boy?”
“I know you,” Margaret said. “You’re too late. He's inside, the door is shut.”
Margaret jabbed her rime blade at the two dead Quarg Hounds. “I killed these. Do not think of me as incapable of killing you.”
“Oh, I know your capabilities. You and I, we are much the same, steeped in blood. Wouldn’t you agree?” Tope slid his knife from its belt, his other hand gripping a pistol. “The boy now, he is something altogether different… undeserving.”
“I don't care. He has made it to the Engine of the World. He has walked through the door. I've delivered the bomb, that is all I ever needed to do.”
Margaret loosened her sword arm, swung the blade once, twice. Tope shot her in the stomach and she toppled to her knees, dropping the rime blade. She reached out towards it, her fingers touched the hilt. Tope gave her an almost sympathetic smile, and dragged the sword away from her.
“Miss Penn, people walk back through doors, too,” Tope said. “And when he does, I will be here. I am a patient man.”
Margaret went for a gun at her belt, and he shot her again. She fell on her side.
“That’s the problem when you try and fight someone else’s fight. This isn’t between you and I, it never was. You think me cruel,” Tope said. “And I am cruel, that’s a Verger’s remit, to be cruel when the rest of the world cannot. But this is given with love.”
Margaret’s world had shrunk to Tope. “Would you just shut up,” she said.
Tope’s lips pursed. He shook a finger at her, then lifted his arm higher. A dark spot on his wrist bubbled and spat. Skin tore free and from the wound a single moth detached itself, shaking out bloody wings. “See, I am also a bringer of gifts.”
Margaret found some vestige of strength. She yanked her last gun from her belt, the wound in her belly tearing (though she did not scream), and fired, not at him — because he was right, this had never been between him and her — but the moth.
The shot went wide. The Witmoth, however, didn’t. Margaret flung up her arms too late. It struck her face and slid with all the certainty of a death towards her eyelid. It was fluid and razor-sharp. It burned. She dropped her pistol, clawed at her face. Tope might as well not be there, the wound in her stomach did not exist, only this blazing pain.
“ Hello, my darling. I’m bringing you home,” her mother said, and Margaret felt such joy, the absolute happiness; she had a mother again. She struggled against the thought: it was a lie. A trap for her mind.
There was no pain. Tope was smiling almost beatifically at her.
Margaret stood up, almost toppled again. Gritted her teeth. “And what if I don’t want to go?”
“You have no choice, my darling. None at all.”
She blinked; she was sitting inside the iron ship. Tope wasn’t, she knew that he would be back there waiting for David, and if he walked back through the door, David would face Tope’s knives.
She felt calm. Was this how David had experienced Carnival? She could think, she could rage, but it was all at a distance. As though she was watching someone else. David, she had to warn him!
Margaret rose from the seat.
She blinked. She was back at her chair.
She looked down: her fingers brushed her belly, dark forms held the wound closed, Witmoths more substantial than any she had seen before. They hissed at her touch. How long had she been… whatever it was that she had been?
“They will heal you.” At her feet was a bloody bullet. “The wound was cruel, but it’s nothing that I can’t repair. Margaret, my Margaret.”
She stood again, took a step, and blinked.
She was back in the seat.
This time she’d pulled buckled straps around her shoulders.
“You'll hurt yourself,” a familiar voice said. Her mother's voice, but it came from a different face altogether. Anderson, the head of the Interface, smiled at her with her mother's smile. He reached out and grabbed her arm
